Photo: Dave Austria

Smart brands know they can’t be afraid to speak freely without consultation and review. The lack of a timely response is nearly as damaging as no response at all. Human beings screw up. Brands screw up. Sometimes, it’s the most human thing you’ll see a brand do.

Gotta give some credit to Baja Fresh, the Mexican food chain that recently named their new Korean BBQ menu “Kogi.” It was a move that sent the ardent disciples of L.A.’s trendy Kogi BBQ truck into a frenzy on Twitter and high-profile blogs like LAist. Baja Fresh responded fast. But was it fast enough?

The LAist post accusing Baja Fresh of “Straight-Out Copying Kogi BBQ” hit at 11am, and twelve minutes later I watched @boldbajafresh go dark for almost nine hours.

Up until that point, @boldbajafresh was a nice blend of human response with a healthy pinch of direct marketing thrown in. Since they came back that night, admitting their blunder and promising to rename the menu “Gogi”, they’ve spent the better part of 200 tweets and five days apologizing and explaining.

Perhaps they can learn something other than Korean BBQ from the original Kogi.  On their blog and on Twitter, @kogibbq simply and swiftly acknowledged the issue and asked their customers: “OMGZ – what do you guys think we shouLd do???”

Wow. What a human response. Faced with an issue that involves trademarks and lawyers, not to mention the marketplace implications of a huge chain appropriating your hard-earned brand, Kogi recruited their customer-consultants over their legal advisors.

Kogi has created their cult from scratch by being human. When their trucks are late to a destination, they own the delay and let people know how much longer they’ll have to wait.

In comparison to #AmazonFail and others, Baja Fresh’s nine-hour response was almost admirable. But nine hours is a lifetime on the Social Media clock.

People can be very forgiving when a mistake is quickly recognized and amended. To err is human, right? So when a brand errs and acknowledges its fault, it shows its human side. When customers can identify with and relate to a brand because of its human qualities, the brand wins.